The Murder of Dr. George Tiller

Without getting into my views on abortion in general, I can say with certainty that I believe that when a woman and her doctors all decide a procedure is necessary, and that procedure is both legal and comfortably within the bounds of current medical practice, that there should be a specialist able to perform it. I can say also that I believe in hospice care, living wills, and death with dignity. I believe there are any number of medical situations in which death is inevitable, and the artificial continuation of life is grotesque, expensive, painful, and assaultive - particularly when that life's extension directly harms the health of the survivors. I believe in allowing dying people to die a few days earlier if they want to; I believe in providing morphine to ease the transition. I believe in euthanasia of mangled and mutilated cats. Although I oppose the death penalty, what I oppose most about it is the unwillingness of medical professionals to administer it, and the resulting brutal cruelties as neither the lethal dose nor the palliative is injected correctly.

I believe in the work of Dr. George Tiller. I am ashamed that there are only two doctors left in America who will do the work he did. I am stunned by the cowardice of the medical community. I am stunned by how many of them can agree that a procedure is right, and how few of them are willing to perform it. I am outraged by the effectiveness of our local terrorists.

I feel like nothing I can do with my life will ever be adequate when I know there is this absence, and know I have not chosen to fill it.